8/22/13 ¡ OUTLINE • Gricean model of figures of speech FIGURES OF SPEECH • Tough question • Sperber & Wilson suggested answer • Problems • The correct (roughly Davidsonian) STEPHEN SCHIFFER model GO FIGURE, LONDON 2013 3 1 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ THE GRICEAN MODEL GRICEAN MODEL (2) b. Expression-meaning a. Speaker-meaning • σ : <A, Ψ > • What S means in “uttering” x • ‘Is she amusing?’: <?, x f is amusing at t u > • supervenes on intentions with which S uttered • ‘She’s amusing.’: < ⊦ , x f is amusing at t u > x c. Saying/speaking literally • not determined even in part by meaning of x (or whether x has meaning) • S said p in uttering σ = S meant p in uttering σ & p “fits” the meaning of σ • Role of x • S spoke literally in uttering assertoric sentence σ = for some p, S said p in uttering σ 4 5 2 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ GRICEAN MODEL (3) GRICEAN MODEL (4) d. Implicature Mistakes to be avoided • S “implicated” p in uttering σ ≈ S meant “Grice tended to take for granted … that when someone uses language to communicate, she is but didn’t say p in uttering σ presumed to express her meaning literally. It can • Any proposition that can be meant can in then be assumed by default that the literal principle be said linguistic meaning of the utterance is … the explicit part of her meaning (Grice’s what is said ), with only • Must have truth conditions the implicit part (Grice’s implicatures ) left to be • Proposition that colorless green ideas sleep inferred” furiously is false • Needn’t be “paraphrasable” —Sperber & Wilson, “A Deflationary Account of Metaphors” 6 7 3 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ GRICEAN MODEL (5) GRICEAN MODEL (5) BUT e. Figures of speech are ways of generating implicatures • No “presumption” or “norm” of literalness • Irony: ‘Jane is a fine friend’ • Meaning of sentence almost never what’s said • Metaphor: ‘You are the cream in my co ff ee’ • For Gricean, ALL speaker-meaning is • Meiosis: ‘He was a little intoxicated’ inferred • Hyperbole: ‘He has to walk around in the shower to get wet’ 8 9 4 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ GRICEAN MODEL (6) TOUGH QUESTION f. Corollaries How does model apply to “The Fog”? • No such thing as “figurative meaning” of The fog comes expression type on little cat feet. • No proposition is per se a “figurative It sits looking meaning” over harbor and city • Whatever proposition S means when on silent haunches speaking figuratively could in principle be and then moves on. said 10 11 5 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ ANSWER? ANSWER? (2) … suggested by Sperber & Wilson’s “A Deflationary Account of • Definition of weakly-meaning satisfied if H Metaphor” believes that the author of Daniel Deronda • S weakly means p in uttering σ ≈ for some class of was a woman , even if S never heard of propositions K, S M-intends H to consider some Daniel Deronda proposition or propositions of kind K, where any K proposition is as good as any other • Mistake to speak of “weakly intending” here • E.g. in uttering ‘George Eliot was a woman’ S intends • But can read definition as stipulative there to be a concept C such that 1) C entails that GE was a 19 th Century English novelist • S w-implicates p in uttering x ≈ in uttering x 2) H believes that C was a woman S w-means p but doesn’t w-say p 12 13 6 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ ANSWER? (3) ANSWER? (4) For any concept C of any property φ Applies also to “poetic e ff ects” achieved such that φ is (i) suggested by ‘on in literal use of language little feet’ & (ii) possibly shared by On a leafless bough cat movements and fog movements, A crow is perched— the poet in writing ‘The fog comes/ The autumn dusk. on little cat feet’ w-implicated that the fog comes in way C • That’s what make sentence a metaphor 14 15 7 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ PROBLEMS PROBLEMS (2) Consider c. While poets intend their figures of speech to resonate a ff ectively with their readers, there isn’t “… the rooks in the college garden/Like agile babies still • even a particular vague response they’re going for speak the language of feeling…” (W. H. Auden, “Oxford”) in all readers “Its edges foam'd with amethyst and rose,/Withers once more • the old blue flower of day…” (AE, “The Great Breath”) • Sometimes poet’s just hoping there’s something— anything!—in their words to resonate We have no sense of any propositions ascribing properties to a. rooks or days that Auden or AE w-mean Hope is the thing with feathers That tickles imploring souls, b. “Poetic e ff ects” are gestalt a ff ective responses, and there are And sings the words forgotten no properties such that the “poetic e ff ects” these figures might have on us can be identified with thinking of rooks or in desolate lascivious bowls days having those properties (Emile Dickinson, “Hope”) 16 17 8 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ PROBLEMS (3) THE CORRECT MODEL … is more or less what Davidson proposed in d. Likewise for Sandburg’s poem and “What Metaphors Mean” (1978) Bash ō ’s haiku: w-implicating has nothing to do with the e ff ectiveness “When I die, I want to die like my grandfather did: peacefully in his sleep—not screaming hysterically of good figures of speech like the passengers in the car he was driving.” • One telling this joke might be doing so to implicate some proposition, but that has nothing to do with the joke qua joke 18 19 9 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ CORRECT MODEL (2) CORRECT MODEL (3) • The words that express the joke have no meaning • There might be propositions one has to grasp to get other than their literal meaning in the language a joke, but they aren’t propositions implicated or expressed by the joke • And there’s no proposition such that the joke Heisenberg went for a drive and got stopped by a tra ffi c cop. consists in the teller’s implicating that proposition The cop asked, "Do you know how fast you were going?" • To understand a joke is to “get” it, or know what Heisenberg replied, "No, but I know where I am." there is that one’s supposed to get about it • Jokes aren’t “paraphrasable” because understanding them doesn’t consist in implicated • Not “getting” a joke = not seeing what’s supposed to be funny about it; it’s not failing to realize that the teller propositions one could even try to express in other meant some proposition words 20 21 10 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ CORRECT MODEL (4) REMAINING QUESTIONS • How can we precisely characterize • Same is true, mutatis mutandis, of a ff ective responses to good figures of e ff ective figures of speech speech? • Sometimes “getting” a figure of speech = • How do metaphors et al work to “getting” the joke contained in it achieve those responses? "Before I met my husband, I'd never fallen in love. I'd stepped in it a few times." • Analogous questions re jokes (Rita Rudner) • Not clearly questions for philosophers • Not all “figures of speech” equal as regards to answer the correct model 22 23 11 ¡
8/22/13 ¡ FINAL REMARKS FINAL REMARKS (2) Bearing of figures of speech on … based on “Workshop Overview” Q. on semantics/pragmatics distinction Bearing of figures of speech on —is type of meaning figures of Q. semantics of propositional-attitude speech have a matter of “saying” or reports? “implicating” A. None, subject to small qualification A. None—they don’t have “meaning” in • “Modes of presentation” relevant respect 24 25 12 ¡
Recommend
More recommend
